"The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution." Paul Cezanne

20 reasons to eat a whole food, plant based diet

December 7, 2007

1. There are millions of food poisoning cases reported to the CDC every year and the majority have animal-based origins. The spinach scare in 2006 came from contaminated water run off from a nearby factory farm. However, there has never been a food poisoning case regarding organic produce. Choose to eat organic.

2. Meat, especially ground, can include head, tail, feet, rectum, intestines, urine, and the spinal cord; it is the spinal cord remnants that cause mad cow disease when fed to animals, including humans. At least 10% of Alzheimer cases actually are Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease or mad cow disease in human form. Also, the uric acid (animal urine) found in meat accumulates in human tissues and joints promoting the development of gout.

3. Did you know that it takes 100 acres of land to produce enough beef to feed 20 people? If we use those 100 acres to grow wheat, we could feed 240 people! 440 million tons of grain is fed to livestock every year, and roughly 60 million people die of starvation every year. Can you imagine how many lives we could save if Americans consumed even 10-20% less meat, or better yet, stopped all together?

4. Everyday, tens of millions of one-day-old male chicks are killed because they cannot lay eggs; most being suffocated or crushed to death. The ground-up male chicks are then used as fertilizer or feed for other animals.

5. Half the rainforest in the world has been destroyed already to clear ground to raise enough cattle for human’s appetite for beef. There are about 1,000 species a year that become extinct due to the destruction of the rainforest – done so that humans can have their hamburgers.

6. It takes anywhere from 2,500-5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat. It takes 24 gallons to produce one pound of potatoes and 49 gallons to produce one pound of apples. Every dairy cow drinks 50 gallons of water every day! If the government didn’t help to offset the expenses of the meat industry, it would cost $35 for a hamburger.

7. Some farmers give animals tranquilizers to keep them calm, antibiotics to ward off infection, and hormones to accelerate the growth process. If you eat meat, you are then consuming the tranquilizers, antibiotics, and hormones that are given to them. Sounds rather disgusting; and just think how these toxins might affect your health in the long run!

8. Animals on factory-farms produce 500 million tons of manure a day. The wind will carry it and the rain will wash it to our waters, making factory-farms the primary cause of polluted waters. This pollution not only affects our health as we drink and bathe in this water and breathe the air, it has immediate negative affects on the health of every ecosystem within several hundred miles. This does not even include long-term affects!

9. T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., has concluded in his extensive cancer research that a diet more than 5% of animal-based foods promotes cancer. The average American consumes 9-15%…makes you wonder a little less why we keep losing the war on cancer.

10. Animal-based foods produce an acidic environment which creates and prolongs the inflammatory process which contributes to arthritic diseases, heart disease, osteoporosis, and diseases. Cooking meat coagulates the animal proteins within, making them much harder to digest and more inflammatory, while also delaying healing and causing great oxidative damage.

12. In the same way the pharmaceutical companies “donate” money to politicians to promote their own interest, so do the meat and dairy industries. The same big money that controls our interests in oil, in prescriptions, in fast food, and in tobacco is the same money that controls the continued promotion of meat and dairy, despite links to reason #11 above.

13. Vegetarians are fitter than meat eaters. Many of the world’s most successful athletes are vegetarian. It’s much easier to become (and stay) slim if you are a vegetarian (by ‘slim’ I do not mean abnormally ‘slender’ or ‘underweight’ but, rather an absence of excess weight).

14. Every minute of every working day, thousands of animals are killed in slaughter-houses. Many animals are bled to death, making their pain and misery wretchedly common. In the US alone 500,000 animals are killed for meat every hour. In a lifetime the average meat eater will consume at least 36 pigs, 36 sheep and 750 chickens and turkeys. Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. Don’t you find it a horrible and sad thought, to spend your final days locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animals and then cruelly forced into a blood soaked death chamber? Animals that die for your dinner table die brutally, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane. Anyone who eats meat condones and supports the way these animals are treated.

15. A whole-food, plant-based diet provides all the vital nutrients to promote health well into old age. Meat contains absolutely nothing – proteins, vitamins or minerals – that the human body cannot obtain perfectly well from a vegetarian diet.

16. As much as some would like you to believe, artificial sweeteners are not safe. Acesulfame K is a chemical that has been found to affect the thyroid gland and has been linked with promoting cancer. Aspartame (NutraSweet) increases one’s risk of developing lymphomas, leukemia, brain tumors, dizziness, hallucinations, headaches, and urticaria. Saccharin (Sweet & Low) has been linked with cancer of the uterus, ovaries, skin, urinary bladder, and blood vessels. Sucralose (Splenda) has reported side effects such as skin rashes/flushing, panic-like agitation, dizziness and numbness, diarrhea, muscle aches, headaches, intestinal cramping, bladder issues, and gastric distress.

18. All fried foods are loaded with saturated fats and hydrogenated oils which are directly related to heart disease, arteriosclerosis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and stroke. When foods are fried at high temperatures, carcinogens and heterocyclic amines are formed which accelerates cancer growth. And, as fried foods are loaded with fat, they are also loaded with calories, which attribute development of obesity and type-II diabetes.

19. There is nothing safe about artificial or natural flavors. Companies use artificial chemicals to flavor foods because of cheaper production costs, making it more profitable than using the real thing. For example, cherry flavored foods are often chemical-based, containing no actual cherry fruit and the chemicals used to mimic the taste of real food are utterly disgusting. To produce artificial cherry flavor MF 83, the following must be combined: eugenol, cinnamic aldehyde, anisyl acetate, anisic aldehyde, ethyl oenanthate, benzyl acetate, vanillin, aldehyde C16, ethyl butyrate, amyl butyrate, tolyl aldehyde, benzaldehyde, and alcohol-95%. Do you seriously want to consume those substances? Does it seem at all possible that the intake of this flavor is natural, let alone, safe? What does ‘natural flavor’ really mean? If an ingredient was safe and natural, why don’t food manufactures label it? The exact definition of natural flavorings & flavors from Title 21, Section 101, part 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations is as follows: “The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.” What does that definition really mean? It means that ‘natural flavors’ can be almost anything approved for use in food. Don’t trust it!

20. If the thought of a cow nursing from the breast of a female human disturbs you a little, why on earth would you drink breastmilk from a completely different species? Cow milk is the perfect food for growing calves only, not for other cows, and certainly not for humans. Cultures that drink milk have increased incidences of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer. Milk has also been linked to mucous congestion, asthma, obesity, and heart disease. Milk, like all animal proteins, produces an acidic environment in the body, which causes osteoporosis. Scientific evidence shows that milk offers not one ounce of protection in the fight against osteoporosis. Want proof? Go check the label of any milk carton and see if it states anywhere in writing that milk prevents osteoporosis.

With all 20 reasons listed above, I hope this makes you question who is really looking after your health. Please take charge of your own health and stop allowing your independent thinking to be limited and coerced by corruption due to self-promoting interests of the meat, dairy, fast-food, pharmaceutical, and soft-drink industries. I please ask you to stop sacrificing your logic and reasoning to industries that are poisoning our society because you are nothing more than a dollar sign in their eyes. Who really profits from your sickness? Not you. And, who wins by leading you down the wrong path? Not you! And, what is the emotional damage to your loved ones when you are dying of one of our society’s top diseases? What is the financial drain from cancer, heart disease, or diabetes? Who can you really blame when your quality of life is diminished by being ill? And, who can you blame when the only relief from illness is death?

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3 Responses to “20 reasons to eat a whole food, plant based diet”

Researchers at Cornell decided that the most sustainable diet for New York State would include eggs, dairy, and a little meat because of areas that were suitable for pasturing but not for crops. There’s a link to it on my blog if you’re interested — filed under Sustainable Agriculture.